Kildale from Cook’s Crags

A rather dull late afternoon dog walk up to Cook’s Crags overlooking Kildale with the nights drawing in. Kildale is quiet vale almost entirely belonging to the Kildale Estate. The Normans referred to it as Childale when the Percys perhaps occupied the motte and bailey castle. But the Scandinavians were here before then. When St. Cuthbert’s Church was being built 7 or 8 Viking burials were found with swords and other grave goods. It must have been an earlier church where the devil, for a joke, drank the church well dry so that the priest could get no holy water.

The village wasn’t always sleepy. It was on the turnpike road from Stokesley to Whitby and once boasted a school, post office and pub but these are now all converted to residential. The railway arrived in 1861 with it brief periods of ironstone mining and whinstone quarrying.